The Enterprise Forum, featuring Tallwood Ventures, will take place on
the Stanford Campus, in the Paul Allen CIS Auditorium. We invite labmembers
and friends of the lab community to attend. This will be the first in
series of such events facilitating information exchange and networking
opportunities between the lab community and our SNF Affiliates.
From 11-12, will be a presentation about Tallwood, followed by an open
Q&A session with its founder and some of its principals. From 12-1
will be lunch, breakout sessions, and opportunities for one-on-ones. Lunch
will be provided.
Preregistration is highly encouraged, as space is limited. To register
(there is no fee), send an email to Mary
Tang with your name, title, and organization. (For maps, transportation,
and parking info, go <here>.)
Dado
Banatao - Managing Partner, Founder
With his past experiences as an entrepreneur, Dado provides Tallwood
with a unique perspective. As an engineer, he is credited with developing
several key semiconductor technologies and is regarded as a Silicon
Valley visionary. As an investor, he has a keen sense of trends and
opportunities involving technology solutions for computing and communications.
Prior to forming Tallwood, Dado was a venture partner at the Mayfield
Fund. He co-founded three technology startups: S3 (SBLU), Chips &
Technologies (INTC) and Mostron. He also held positions at National
Semiconductor, Seeq Technologies, Intersil and Commodore International.
In 1997, he was honored with the prestigious Master Entrepreneur of
the Year Award sponsored by Ernst & Young, Inc. magazine and Merrill
Lynch Business Financial Services. Dado serves as Chairman of SiRF Technology
(SIRF), InPhi Corporation, Peleton and Sequoia Communications and is
on the boards of directors of Alphion Corporation, Redfern Integrated
Optics, Teja Technologies Inc. and T-RAM Semiconductor. He also served
as Chairman and led investments in Marvell Technology Group (MRVL);
Acclaim Communications, acquired by Level One (INTC); Newport Communications,
acquired by Broadcom (BRCM); Cyras Systems, acquired by Ciena (CIEN);
and Stream Machine, acquired by Cirrus Logic (CRUS). Dado holds a B.S.E.E.,
cum laude, from the Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines
and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/dado_b.html
Ron
Yara - General Partner
With his first-hand knowledge of being a successful entrepreneur, Ron
has a strong sense of what it takes to build a successful company. This
experience allows Ron to ensure that Tallwood makes value-added contributions
to its portfolio companies. Ron co-founded two technology startups,
S3 (SBLU) and Chips & Technologies (INTC). He also held various
technical and management positions at Intel Corporation, Raytheon Semiconductor,
Scientific Microsystems and Data Pathing. Ron serves on the boards of
directors of Axiom Microdevices, Collinear Corporation, H-Stream Wireless
and Silicon Clocks. Ron holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from
Purdue University and an M.S.E.E. from Santa Clara.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/ron_y.html
Luis
Arzubi, General Partner
Luis's vast past experience – more than 30 years in various engineering,
management and executive roles with IBM – brings a distinctive
and valuable technologist and customer point of view to Tallwood’s
practice. Before joining Tallwood, Luis was a member of the executive
team for IBM’s Microelectronics Division. Most recently he served
as Vice President and General Manager for the division, where he was
responsible for all the semiconductor business segments. During the
1990s he played the key role in moving IBM Microelectronics into the
OEM business and making it succeed. Earlier, Luis was the General Manager
for IBM's Burlington, Vermont, site, where he was responsible for two
mega fabs and the development lab. From 1986 through 1991, Luis was
Lab Director at IBM's General Technology Division, where he was responsible
for all of IBM’s non-bipolar semiconductor technologies and product
development activities. Luis currently serves on the boards of directors
of Amulaire Thermal Technology, Cavendish Kinetics and T-RAM Semiconductor.
He is the inventor of five key memory patents and has published more
than two dozen technical papers. Luis holds a B.S. and an M.S. in Electrical
Engineering from the National University of Littoral in Argentina.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/luis_a.html
Debajyoti (Debu) Pal - Chief Technology Officer
Debu focuses on communications, networking and mixed signal investments
as well as overseeing Tallwood's technology roadmap.
Prior to joining Tallwood, Debu founded Excess Bandwidth Corporation,
a fabless DSL Physical Layer chipset company, which was acquired by
Virata (CNXT). Before that, he held senior technical and technical management
positions at Amati Communications (TXN), where he developed ADSL and
VDSL technologies and products. Prior to Amati, he held senior technical
positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories and Intel Corporation. Debu
holds seven U.S. patents and has published more than 30 technical papers.
He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE, for "Contributions to the
theory and practice of use of excess bandwidth and diversity in adaptive
equalization for data transmission." He is also a Consulting Professor
of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, where his focus is
Signal Processing for Communications. Debu received a B.Tech. (Hons.)
Degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering (ECE)
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; an M.S.E.E. degree
from Washington State University; and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
from Stanford University.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/deba_p.html
Syrus
Ziai - Executive-in-Residence
Syrus has 15 years of semiconductor design and management experience,
including co-founding a semiconductor company. Prior to joining Tallwood
he co-founded Nucleus Logic, a fabless semiconductor company integrating
networking and computing functions for servers. Syrus was also an R&D
manager at HP in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Cupertino, California,
and he served as Director of ASIC Design at Digital Archway. His experience
spans multiple generations of PA-RISC and IPF CPU and server chipset
designs, as well as networking ASICs and CAD tools. Syrus holds a B.
S. in Electrical Engineering, with honors, from Rice University and
an M. S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/syrus_z.html
David
Bergeron, Executive-in-Residence
At Tallwood, David applies his technology development and general management
experience of more than 20 years toward the evaluation of semiconductor
chip products and equipment opportunities. Prior to joining Tallwood,
David held senior management positions at Applied Materials, Candescent
Technologies and IBM Microelectronics. These positions included VP and
General Management responsibilities for a semiconductor equipment product
line; semiconductor fab operation management responsibilities, including
CMOS DRAM and CMOS LOGIC product development; and multiple technology
product integration responsibilities supporting an advanced display
opportunity. David has authored 17 U.S. patents grants and has published
more than 30 technical bulletins and papers. David received a B.S. in
Physics and an M.S. in Applied Mathematics from Georgetown University.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/david_b.html
Pete
Foley, Executive-in-Residence
Pete brings to Tallwood more than 20 years of engineering design and
management experience in Silicon Valley. As an early member of the IC
technology group at Apple, Pete developed ASICs for the early Macs,
and he was a principal hardware architect on the Apple Newton team.
He led the IC technology and graphics product groups at SuperMac and
headed systems engineering and product planning at Chromatic Research,
a fabless semiconductor startup that developed the Mpact media processor
for the PC. He was a founder and CEO of nBand Communications, a fabless
semiconductor startup developing software-defined radio solutions for
the broadband wireless market. He most recently served as VP Engineering
at Predicant Biosciences, where he led a team that developed time-of-flight
mass spectrometry detectors for a protein biomarker discovery and assay
platform. Pete holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Rice University
and an M.S. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/pete_f.html
Paul
Vroomen, Executive-in-Residence
Paul brings over 25 years of semiconductor operating experience to Tallwood,
where he focuses on market and business strategies of prospective and
current Tallwood companies. Paul has devoted much of his career to the
microprocessor and digital media-related markets. Most recently, Paul
was CEO of Connex Technology, where he drove the repositioning of the
company into the emerging HDTV market. Prior to Connex, Paul was CEO
of SandCraft, Inc., where he converted SandCraft from an IP company
into a fables semiconductor company focusing on the networking, mass
storage and printer markets. Earlier in his career, Paul served as VP/GM
of operating divisions at Oak Technology, Inc., VLSI Technology, Inc.,
and VP/GM of the Computer Peripheral Division at Zilog, Inc. Paul started
out his career as a chip designer in both bipolar and CMOS technologies.
Paul holds a B.Sc Eng., cum laude, from the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa, and an MSEE from the Philips International
Institute in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/paul_v.html
Natasha Skok , Venture Partner
Natasha focuses on operations at Tallwood as well as with portfolio
companies.She has more than 15 years of experience in leading organizations
and establishing processes in product and program management at innovative
companies from a variety of industries, including semiconductors, consumer
electronics and scientific instruments. Prior to joining Tallwood, Natasha’s
most recent position was General Manager of the Audio division of SONICblue.
Before that, she was VP of Business Operations at ReplayTV, where she
established operations from the ground up, including manufacturing,
supply chain, distribution and customer care. Earlier, at S3, she established
project management practices and managed key projects.
Natasha holds a B.A. in Chemistry from U.C. Santa Cruz and an MBA from
U.C. Berkeley.
http://www.tallwoodvc.com/team/natasha_s.html